Home Improvement
- Thread starter Picasso3
- Start date
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Is there anything that can be done about your foundation slab cracking/shifting? I think the slab cracking is pretty normal, especially on a 40+ year old house. However, now it seems to be shifting, vertically. The tile on top of the slab is raised and cracking in some places. I'm not even sure wtf can be done if this really is a problem.
- 904
- 1,499
I had to do about $8k worth of foundation repair at my last house. I'm sure the building codes differ state to state, but if you can get a couple quotes you'll start to understand the issue you face better.
I had Ram Jack come in and do a "fix everything" quote and a "minimal repair" quote. Based on experiences of other people we spoke to, we knew they would be the top tier contractor that uses all the fancy tech, which meant $$$. We used the drawings they provided in their quote to get estimates from other contractors.
Ram Jack original quote was for 22 piers, 18 outside and 4 inside, for a total of about $25k. (stay away from inside piers if you can. the quote did not include floor repair, just concrete slab repair). We found an engineer that was also a home inspector, and he gave us the info we needed to perform a true minimal repair. ended up with 9 piers outside.
The main things to ask yourself are:
are you going to be selling soon? (does it need to pass an inspection)
what is your goal to fix it? are you trying to stay ahead of a larger problem, or is this something you just noticed and are curious about?
Food for thought.
I had Ram Jack come in and do a "fix everything" quote and a "minimal repair" quote. Based on experiences of other people we spoke to, we knew they would be the top tier contractor that uses all the fancy tech, which meant $$$. We used the drawings they provided in their quote to get estimates from other contractors.
Ram Jack original quote was for 22 piers, 18 outside and 4 inside, for a total of about $25k. (stay away from inside piers if you can. the quote did not include floor repair, just concrete slab repair). We found an engineer that was also a home inspector, and he gave us the info we needed to perform a true minimal repair. ended up with 9 piers outside.
The main things to ask yourself are:
are you going to be selling soon? (does it need to pass an inspection)
what is your goal to fix it? are you trying to stay ahead of a larger problem, or is this something you just noticed and are curious about?
Food for thought.
Got down most of the decking today. Nailgun over screws is a huuuuuuuuuuuge time saver. 2x for decking seems alright.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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So, question. I think I am going to put up shade sails. The only thing is I need to put in at least 1 post to hold them up. How deep do you think a 6x6 needs to go overall? Figure about 10 feet tall. Thing I read said 50% of exposed length so I'd need like 6' down with the pad for the concrete. Just seems a little much for something holding a 13x13 triangle shade sail...
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Dunno about your soil but here that would be a LOT and our soil is very wet and easy to knock a post down. I wouldn't go any deeper than 2' if your embedding in concrete, if that much. I went 18" on average on 4x4's that are holding up the 20'x40' lean to attached to my shop. Use some type of breakaway connecter at the post in case your sail catches too much wind. I sure wouldn't go 5' down.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Yea that seems more reasonable. Soil here is super compacted and hard, doesn't absorb water easily. Breakaway I'm not sure what I can use, are there ones that you can buy that are rated for certain pressures? I guess people usually use turnbuckles to tension to around 100 pounds of force to take the slack out.
opiate82
Bronze Squire
- 3,078
- 5
The rule of thumb I've always followed is 1' down for every 3' up, but that is for wooden fences. I'd imagine a "shade sail" will have far less weight/stress on it than a wood fence. I would guess that 2' would probably do the job but I would over build and go 3' if it were me. Especially if it is only one post hole you have to dig you can suck it up.
If you're talking about one of those tension fabric canopies I'd find steel for a post. Depth wise I always thought structural guys were a little nuts because they'd call for something like 2 ft diameter 6' deep sono tubes for each of 6 legs on a 20x15 picnic shelter, but it probably is deeper that you would intuitively think.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
- 23,602
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The rugged engineer in me wants to go steel, the weak homeowner in me wants to go easier-to-work-with PT.
Also why I'm worried about tying that to the rafter tails through the wooden fascia board. I think I'll reinforce that whole section of fascia with angle brackets.
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Yup. Make that attachment point strong as you can. I once attached a steel sign that was about 4' square flat against a building (hardware store) with four lag bolts in to masonry. Believe it or not, the wind blew it off. I put it back up with 15 lags. It stayed then.